Finally Getting there!

I so swear to God that I was ready to toss this quilt out the of the window yesterday! (altho it wasn’t the quilt’s fault) Just me and my stubbornness and a time where being determined wasn’t maybe such a good thing!

I used my Singer 514 to freemotion quilt the Michigan Left – had a few issues with it, but nothing to major as it was the first time I had used that machine for freemotion quilting .. I was happy enough with it .. so I left it out to do the quilting on this quilt. Jesusmaryjoseph!!! There was tension issues, but adjusted for them with this quilt being thicker than the Michigan Left, and I was breaking needles like crazy the first time thru – Like 4 of them. Figured I was going to fast. Then I ran into needle breakage issues in the last go round for Kyle’s borders. I think I broke another 4 on just the outer border alone .. then it didn’t like one of the needles at all and kept skipping stitches. It got to the point where I was incredibly frustrated and using some very inventive language – at this point, burning was too good for this quilt!!

I had 1 side and maybe 8″ of another side left to do and I broke 2 more needles and just about snapped. I was beyond flabbergasted and frustrated at that point. I know I wasn’t going to fast, but the quilting didn’t feel right while I was doing it either. Then another needle broke – I could have just cried. These were all good schmetz and dritz quilting needles too! So I grabbed my 15-91 and used that instead .. I should have done this in the first place!! The rest of quilted up easy peasy – no needles broken, no stitches being off.

I can’t tell you why I was so insistent to use this machine – I think it was because I didn’t want to bother swapping them out when I was doing the Michigan Left … I’m just wishing I had done it sooner 😦 My 15 is the best machine for freemotion. I’ve never broken a needle on it .. Geeze I broke more needles on Kyle’s quilt that I’ve done in I don’t know how long! The last time I can remember is when my 248 died last year!!

So the tissue is halfway ripped off and I plan to have the rest of it done today. Then to trim, and do binding .. I would love to get it to that point, but not sure right now – we’ll have to see how I feel about it then.

My next quickie project is a colour challenge that I’ve devised for OST .. altho there aren’t many takers (gee I think 2 at this point – including me **sigh) What you do is pick one colour you aren’t crazy about / hate / uncomfortable with using etc and then pick 2 colours that harmonize with it .. Number of blocks, style of block etc is your choice .. I’m going to use the lighter purple (fav colour) for the background (ignore the dark purple – won’t be used), and use the orange (not my favourite colour) and green for the block part .. I’m going to do an abstract twist on a traditional block – a little 8″ quiltlet .. won’t take me long, but I’m not starting it yet 🙂 kyle’s quilt be ‘done’ first 😉 Anyone else want to try this challenge and post it to your blog??

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3 thoughts on “Finally Getting there!”

Gracie, that is exactly what happened when I quilted Rick’s TATW quilt. I broke so many needles and the thread kept balking up my bobbin and creating nesters! I like to never got that dang thing done and was totally frustrated! But like you said, I was stubborn and it finally got finished LOL Glad to see you finally head way after changing machines 🙂

That happened to me a long time ago…so I bought a new machine. Recently I tried the old one…seems I had the needles in backward! and it still works fine. Oh well, I didnt miss that $5000! yeah like heck I don! could have gone on a cruise with what I spent needlessly!

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to the place where I share my wacky thoughts, weird and novel ideas and even weirder math relating to my quilts and some other facets of my life. Comments are always welcome .. please feel free to add yours :)